


and on the seventh day

by QueenOfTheQuill



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, UnDeadwood, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role), major finale spoilers, y'all I am BROKEN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 17:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheQuill/pseuds/QueenOfTheQuill
Summary: Aloysius wakes up.
Comments: 30
Kudos: 104





	and on the seventh day

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle up motherfuckers, it's angst time.
> 
> Disclaimers: MAJOR finale spoilers. Written in like 20 minutes and only read over once. Also, all of my quotes are approximate and I may or may not fix them later.

Aly got six nights of calm, restful sleep. The best he’d had in years.

On the seventh morning, he woke up screaming.

He was already several towns away. Of course, at the time, it had seemed sensible to leave town, with people that might want him dead and a bounty to collect in another county. At the time, justice had been served. At the time… at the time...

Clayton Sharpe. Amos Kinsley. What did it matter? Either way, a friend dead by his hand, and not even Deadwood could reverse that.

_ I ain’t ever shot a man who didn’t shoot me first. _

He’d seemed so clear-headed at the time, why didn’t he remember that? God, why didn’t he remember that?

_ I hope his soul can carry another unearned victory. _

Aly hung his head in his hands, his shout already turning to sobs as he stuffed a fist in his mouth to keep the sound from traveling to the rest of this waypoint inn. He was carrying that, alright. He was carrying a lot more than that. Miriam, sobbing, the Reverend, begging them to find another way. Arabella’s silent eyes, watching him sentence their friend to death in the place where they’d all first met. New friends or no friends after all? And Clayton (Amos. Clayton.) calmly asking him for one last drink.

The right of a dead man.

And the small smile on Clayton’s ( <strike> Amos’. </strike> _ Clayton’s.) _ face as he died. The small one that said, “I knew this is how it would end.”

“And I fuckin proved that right, didn’t I?” Aly had to choke the words out around the lump in his throat. He wasn’t even sure he was talking to. Himself? A God who would grant him no salvation for this? The ghost of Clayton Sharpe, one more innocent man killed in the street?

_ Survival. I can understand that. _

The thing that he and Mr. Sharpe had had in common, the innate drive to live and fight and keep going. Now, the only thing they had in common, as Mr. Sharpe had died an innocent man and he would not.

Still. The drive was there.

Aly pushed himself up, straightening under the dreadful weight of another soul on his conscience. The soul of a man who shot to disarm him, even after being shot in the chest. The soul of a supposed sharpshooter who shot suspiciously poorly. The soul of a man who waited as he, Aly, lined up his shot and made certain that his friend was going through with it.

The soul of a man who always shot second and got killed for it like it was a crime.

Heaving his way out of bed, Aly pulled his still-packed bag from the floor. He might deserve to hang for what he’d done, but he didn’t think most anywhere would agree when it was only the blood of a bounty saturating the dust.

When Aloysius Fogg left that roadside inn, his limp was more pronounced than ever, his shoulders hunched as though carrying some great, invisible sack. The bartender just shook his head and went back to cleaning glasses.

Aloysius rode west.


End file.
